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Two things are swirling in my head: 1) Libraries and librarians are rabidly anti-censorship 2) The Supreme Court's ruling about pornography "I know it when I se
by heymijo 9y ago
Two things are swirling in my head:
1) Libraries and librarians are rabidly anti-censorship
2) The Supreme Court's ruling about pornography "I know it when I see it"
Libraries aren't cesspools of things titled "...a Fat, Childless 32-Year-Old-Slut" and yet subversive books have always been available.
Libraries/librarians seem to have figured out how to toe the line between freedom of speech and the kinds of hate-speech that caused GoDaddy to dump the Daily Stormer.
These are raw thoughts, but I'm wondering what we might be able to learn from the librarian ethos.
- throwaway76543 9y ago"Libraries aren't cesspools of things" They are, actually. There's plenty of hate filled speech in my local library. It carries Mein Kampf, for example, as well as plenty of other objectionable material. The difference is probably that you don't fixate on these things when you visit the library. You don't consider the entire library to be a cesspool simply because it contains some objectionable material. Libraries have a strong, approachable position which supports disseminating all speech, including vile speech. It's an academic position, independent of good PR. Folks are strongly discouraged from engaging in book-burning campaigns against libraries. This culture is largely lacking on the internet, which is primarily run by profit seeking companies who worry about their public image. So maybe the internet isn't a cesspool either? Perhaps the issue is that the curators of the internet are happy to censor, in exchange for better public relations?